plant mama
plant mama & daddyFor my 29th birthday, my brother got me a green hat that says Plant Mama. It’s my second favorite hat, just behind a beige Harvard hat that I got when visiting Meg Williams (Scanlon if you’re nasty) in Boston. There are certain words or phrases that feel overly declarative to wear on clothing, but Plant Mama is one of my favorite titles. When I moved into my apartment in Wilkinsburg in 2017, Stella and I introduced three plants – a viny ivy that hung from the window in a wooden box and two Home Depot succulents that may or may not have had fake flowers glued to them. These plants are long dead. However, there are a few apartment plants still thriving in our now home. One particular stand out is the IKEA cactus that my first boss and I bought as a centerpiece for a Chatham event. Nothing has ever been wrong with this plant. The extent of its evolution is that its needles have grown longer. It doesn’t want to be touched, but asks for literally nothing. I respect this guy immensely and feel that it prefers our live and let live dynamic. This is a good example of how Plant Mama is kind of a false title.
Despite loving them, I am not truly their mom. I care about the plants and do everything I can to give them a good life, but ultimately, they’re doing their own thing while sharing our space. I feel the same way about my cats. The only exception to this rule is my dog, who regularly makes me feel like I am raising a toddler with anxiety which is supposed to be one of the cool things toddlers don’t have yet. Being mother to something feels like an earned title, worthy of great respect. You brought something into the world and now you must do your best to care for it. I certainly didn’t bring my plants into the world, I picked them out. Some came from IKEA, Home Depot, or Trax Farms, others were gifted to me from friends, family, and in the case of our famous aloe, Joe’s former neighbor. Two of my favorite plants came from the Plant Mama who sells plants at Trader Jack’s flea market, ifykyk. The idea of being anything or anyone’s mom makes me think only of one person and her immensity to me — my mom.
When my mom died, I mostly had to keep functioning like a normal person as best as I could, which is a cruel and debilitating phenomenon that stems from our society’s lack of grief resources and obsession with capitalism. My husband and I had to wake up each morning and go to work, feed the pets, pay the bills, and keep existing. It didn’t matter that I felt like an alien who had been transported from another world in which my mom’s death was the only thing anyone thought or talked about (the house I grew up in). For the first month of my then new job, which started one week after her death, I came home each day and sobbed for an hour. At one point I asked Joe, “If I was just like this now?” to which he replied, “Yeah, for a while.”
angel girl, too big 4 this world and my houseI could’ve stopped working out, but I became more obsessed with it, it was the only thing that felt satisfyingly painful and distracting. I could’ve stopped seeing my friends, but they reminded me that I was alive and loved so wholly. I could’ve failed spectacularly at my difficult new job, but instead I got really good at it. The thing I dropped the ball on was my plants. For years, we have watered them every Wednesday, and in the summer, on Wednesdays and Sundays. We generally take turns, but at some point, I started to continuously forget or fall into a pile on the floor and scream, and Joe took over. If you have a lot of plants, you know that the wintertime is weird for them, especially when they are native to tropical, humid locations. They need extra care, more humidity, more pruning, and as much sun as the sky will offer, which in a Pittsburgh winter is very little.
The start of the year after her death was not gentle on us. We were planning a wedding, our pipes were freezing, the car stopped working, and my sister-in-law, Alex, suddenly got very sick (she is healthy now <3). I would often scream at the top of my lungs while driving 80 miles per hour and blasting death metal. I didn’t understand why life couldn’t stop life-ing for ONE SECOND so that I could just be sad about one thing at a time — mainly the dead mom thing. I was paranoid that I would collapse under the pressure I felt to keep going when I wanted to lay in bed and cry. I oscillated between raging and weeping at breakneck speed. At my friend’s bachelorette party, after a perfect day of drinking and frolicking by the pool, I cried hysterically into Bri’s arms and then puked across her beautiful Subaru. Continuing to be alive meant being extremely alive all of the time, until I collapsed in a heap and slept like a zombie.
This is all to say that for the most part, the plants were not receiving my typical standard of care. Joe watered them and I felt resentful of them for needing anything from me in this state. When a healthy plant would suddenly turn brown and stop absorbing water, Joe would raise his concern, and I would say something deeply dramatic and misdirected like, “If they want to DIE, let them DIE.” And a few of them did. Our prayer plant which was seemingly healthy shriveled up and died out of the blue. The plants on the rack that got less light showed various signs of concern, including brown spots and wilting. That said, most of them kept on living.
This is an old pic of the rehab window that demonstrates the full force of its power. From left to right: donkey’s tail (hanging), old ass IKEA cactus, giant aloe and her children, bird of paradise, pothos, snake plant. Keith, our much younger cat, revealed a penchant for harming the plants. First, he started peeing in the monstera and the bird of paradise (Joe’s favorite), two of our biggest and oldest plants. We had to flush them with water and place foil around the top of their beds (ugly) to protect them. Keith also became bound and determined to destroy my ‘elephant bush’ – lol. In the spirit of transparency, I have always thought this plant was a jade plant, but in Googling it to write this piece discovered it is actually an elephant bush that looks very similar to a jade plant. My mom got me this plant for Christmas a few years prior and she had started in a planter that was smaller than a mason jar. She sat by our kitchen window for a while until she grew so big that she needed repotted and could no longer fit on the sill.
At that point, we moved her to what we call the “rehab window” which is a window in our living room that is so bright and sunny that if a plant needs serious assistance with life, this is the best place to go. Once again, Keith thwarted us. The rehab window had a spot where he could jump, and he jumped against the elephant bush repeatedly until her branches were breaking and her leaves falling off.
Each time he completed a destructive performance, I would cry and say to Joe, “My mom got us that, we can’t let it die.” Joe decided to barricade the elephant bush with two other plants so that Keith couldn’t get to her. Safe from Keith and supported by the sun of the rehab window, the elephant bush grew rapidly until she was bright green and bigger than ever before. Even though we couldn’t see her very well due to the Keith prevention tactics, knowing that she was improving and that we’d managed to keep this piece of my mom filled my heart up.
the elephant bushI have two wonderful Megs in my life, and one of them, Meg Foster, loves plants, too. I confided in her about how guilty I felt for not feeling strong enough to take care of my plants in the midst of my grief. She told me about another friend who had felt the exact same way when she was going through something difficult. As we were both lamenting various plants that had died due to our perceived failures, I said, “I guess they could also just die because it’s the end of their life, it’s not like they’re meant to live forever, they still die like us.” We stared at each other and nodded slowly. It had never crossed my mind that my plants dying didn’t have to be solely my fault, realizing that a three-year-old plant might just only be meant to live three years filled me with a rare and simple kind of peace.
Recently, I picked up an otherwise healthy plant that had desperately needed repotting for at least six months. She had grown giant since Joe received her as a work Christmas present four years prior, and all she wanted now was a little more room to live. It was frigid outside so I laid down a towel in the vanity room and filled a large planter with succulent soil. I sprinkled in some rooting powder and food in hopes that she would feel happy in her new home. I placed her on a plant rack in a bright room and turned the humidifier on. She was surrounded by other healthy, happy plants that I hoped would help her feel cozy. I would sit by her in the morning each day as I did my makeup and share some carbon dioxide. The sun would bedazzle her and Joe would water her, and we would hope that the plant chose to stay alive for a while longer. This was the most we could do. If she lived, it would be wonderful. If she died, it would be painful, but her nutrients would dissolve into the soil and become a part of the next plant who lived in her home. And in that way, the love would go on and on.